e (09S A PT Na A EE ‘ 
cpme HOME AN:D THE NATION. ; 


SERMON 


DELIVERED BEFORE THE 


Grecutite and Legislative Departments 


OF THE 


GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS, 


AT THE 


MemeN TAT: Ho MCrTION, 


WEDNESDAY, Jan. 4, 1860. 


BY 
THOMAS D. ANDERSON, D. D. 


PASTOR OF DUDLEY ST. BAPTIST CHURCH, ROXBURY. 


Behe. LON: 
WILLIAM WHITE, PRINTER TO THE STATE. 


2 1860. 


THE HOME AND THE NATLON. 


A 


SERMON 


DELIVERED BEFORE THE 


Geeevtive and Legislative Departments 


OF THE 


GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS, 


AT THE 


Pee ea Ly Woks ty CG) Tob GN... 


WEDNESDAY, Jan. 4, 1860. 


BY 


THOMAS D. ANDERSON, D. D. 


PASTOR OF DUDLEY ST. BAPTIST CHURCH, ROXBURY. 


BOSTON: 
WILLIAM WHITE, PRINTER TO THE STATE. 
1860. 


Commontenlth of Massachusetts. 


Hovust oF REPRESENTATIVES, January 20, 1860. 


ORDERED, That three thousand copies of the Election Sermon, deliv- 
ered by Rev. THomas D. AnpERSON, D. D., before the Executive and 
the two Branches of the Legislature, on the fourth instant, be printed for 
the use of the Legislature. 


WILLIAM STOWE, Clerk. 


SERMON. 


Micau Iv. 4. 

BUT THEY SHALL SIT EVERY MAN UNDER HIS VINE AND UNDER HIS FIG-TREE ; 
AND NONE SHALL MAKE THEM AFRAID, FOR THE MOUTH OF THE LORD OF 
HOSTS HATH SPOKEN Ir. 

Herein is a strong confirmation of our faith that 
the vision of home peace will be verified on earth. 
Since He hath spoken, we will believe, for “ The 
Word of the Lord endureth forever.” With man, the 
action changed bespeaks the altered purpose, the 
outward failure tells of inward weakness, and variety 
of imperfection. But with God, myriads of unlike 
forms are but the expressions of infinite resource; the 
interrupted plan is but the temporary eclipse, as His 
full-orbed purposes pass one another in their well- 
ordered revolutions; and an act once done shapes an 
eternal thought, and stands thenceforward a perpetual 
prophecy of its fulfilment. Let man take heart, 
then. Although Eden was blighted, it once was 
planted on earth, and therefore it will be restored. 
By it we learn that at the first God laid the founda- 
tion of society amid the sacred associations of home. 
Man’s interests were not to be isolated, selfish, con- 
flicting, but common and all-pervading ; of one blood 


6 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


He constituted a human brotherhood; by like 
conditions He intended sympathy; harmony was 
designed through diversity of gifts; the infant 
heart, awaking in its first consciousness to the 
influences of love, would have learned to interpret in 
the light of parental affection the dispositions of all 
other hearts, and the family would have been the 
source of human government; its restraints, springing 
from the tenderest solicitude, would have been but 
the bonds of fellowship, and obedience to its gentle 
sway but the grateful response of a trusting nature. 
Just long enough to indicate the design did the 
Divine plan take form, then it was marred by sin. 
By rending the soul from its filial reverence for 
Jehovah, in whose likeness it was created, the 
fraternal tie which bound it to all who bore His 
image was sundered. ‘The peace denied to self by an 
accusing conscience could be allowed no _ other. 
Virtue, unimitated, won only detraction. At the 
more acceptable sacrifice even of a brother, envy 
lighted the fires of hate; and love, driven from the 
breast, left but her name, beneath which cloaked self- 
interest claimed her place and honor. Authority 
became imperious; the surging passions of the many 
must be restrained by the fiercer passions of the few; 
the lust of power seized on dominion; the quiet . 
home fades out of sight; and history blackens her 
pages with the maddened conflicts of kingdoms and 
empires, with here and there the darker or the lighter 
sketch of tyrant or of hero. 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. if 


All had changed but God’s eternal thought; that 
breathed of hope. Paradise, though lost, was a 
promise that the curse should end, when, “instead 
of the thorn, shall come up the fir tree, and instead 
of the briar, shall come up the myrtle tree,” and man 
shall find again a home on earth. The weeping 
woman fled not before her Maker’s wrath until the 
title of Mother, the pledge of home, was confirmed 
to her by the promise of the Seed. With Abraham 
bearing the name of Father, God establishes His 
covenant: “In thee shall all the families of the 
earth be blessed.” Far down the ages the same 
thought inspires Isaiah to sing of the Child whose 
announcement as ‘the government shall be upon 
his shoulders,’ advances the primal idea to a more 
distinct revelation. But when into the diadem of 
coronation, pressing the brows of a son of man, 
inspiration sets the crown jewels of Heaven, ratifying 
His right to be called the “ Wonderful, Counsellor, 
the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince 
of Peace,’ then, not changed, but glorified, shines 
forth Jehovah’s original purpose. The home of earth 
has’ given birth to the Spiritual Kingdom of the 
Messiah, and henceforth is sanctified as the Divine 
ideal of human authority, and the only source of 
national sovereignty. 

While Christianity has ever spurned the organic 
form that ambition has devised for her as a livery, 
in which she might attend on thrones and do the 


8 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


bidding of kings, yet, by weaving silently, and 
without observation, her principles into govern- 
ment, — the ordinance of God,— she has sought to 
prepare for herself a garment wherein, her freedom 
not restrained, nor her progress hindered, she may 
minister her offices of kindness to all people. A 
nation thus blessed with a rule penetrated by the 
spirit of the Gospel is described by the Prophet in 
our text. It stands forth in accordance with what 
we have seen to be from the beginning the will of 
God, who “setteth the solitary in families,’ with 
reference to earthly dominion, founded in the affec- 
tions, and establishing the blessings of home. 
Around it breathes the air of a virtuous imdepen- 
dence. The fruits of his industry are enjoyed by 
every citizen. Driven by no regal mandate to the 
tasks of imperial vanity, each one dwells in his 
chosen habitation. A government imposing no 
burdens exercises an almost unfelt supremacy, beneath 
whose protection, and fostered by whose care, the 
abodes of peace every where nourish a pure and 
vigorous patriotism, at once a people’s spontaneous 
tribute of gratitude, and a nation’s pledge of power. 

Let it not pass unheeded, as the eye rests entranced 
on this image of national happiness, that it is por- 
trayed, not as the result of human wisdom, neither 
as fashioned by the resolves of senates, nor decreed , 
into being by a monarch’s will, but as the accom- 
plished design on earth of the “ Law” that “shall 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 9 


go forth of Zion, and the Word of the Lord from 
Jerusalem.” A consummation realized only when, 
by the all-attracting power of Christianity, “people 
shall flow unto it and say, Come, let us go up to 
the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the 
God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, 
and we will walk in his paths.” Hence, what 
Jehovah has designed for our race, through the 
ministry of government regenerated and sanctified, 
is here made known; while His conception of the 
highest condition attainable by a state is given 
beneath the emblem chosen by inspiration. In this 
national incarnation, therefore, of the Messianic 
kingdom, we have brought forth into actual life, 
the Divine ideal of national prosperity. With our 
text, then, as furnishing the model towards which 
to perfect government, and around which to shape 
our own efforts for the true honor of our Common-. 
wealth, let us ever remember, 


A NATION’S GLORY IS HER PEOPLE'S HOMES. 


A theme like this may seem to some scarcely to. 
comport with this grave occasion; but it has not 
been lightly chosen. A lesson deduced from the 
inspired portraiture of national happiness must have 
for every state no trivial import. What the Divine 
mind has conceived worthy to stand as the evidence 
of the latter day glory furnishes no insignificant 


test to be applied to the principles and policy of 
2 


10 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


present governments; and if in a sketch thus drawn 
by unerring wisdom, much has been omitted that 
would have been wrought into the picture by human 
hands, then may we be sure that human ambition has 
been at fault in attempting to lay the foundations of 
empires amid the fading splendor of earthly pomp, 
rather than on the simple basis of enduring truth. 
No less by its silence than by its utterance,—by what 
it significantly leaves out of view, than by what it so 
vividly depicts, does the passage which we have selected 
to guide our reflections, teach us wisdom. If we have 
comprehended rightly its scope, and possessing our- 
selves of its spirit, have construed its meaning fairly, 
we have here united the Home and the Nation. By 
which natural union, so long and so _profanely 
interrupted, we have the problem of society 
worked out according to its original design. 
National glory beams not from the dazzling 
achievements of royalty, nor the selfish intrigues 
of courts, but is reflected from the virtue, freedom, 
and peace of the people; while power no longer 
‘snatches the unrequited service of the multitude to 
agerandize the few; but, acknowledging its source 
to be in the expressed will of the citizen, it spreads 
its genial protection over the homes where it is 
fostered, and meets the reverence which it thus 
inspires. 

As the honored representatives of the govern- 
ment of this Commonwealth, and members of the 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 1h 


great confederacy of States, whose name, “'THE 
Union,” thrills every patriotic heart, fellow-citizens, 
our subject addresses itself to you first, in tones of 
encouragement. 

If it was a care to the Lord of Hosts to have 
His thought written on the page of Revelation, 
where its predictions through all the dreary cen- 
turies of the world’s misrule, were steadily point- 
ing to the dawning of a brigher era, it was no 
less a care that His Providence, in the turning 
and overturning of empires, in the putting down 
one and setting up another, in making the wrath 
of man to praise him, and in restraining the 
remainder, should thus make room for the realization 
of that thought among the events of history. 
‘¢ Hath He said, and shall He not do it? Hath He 
spoken, and shall He not make it good?” Provi- 
dence is but the Divine fulfilling of the Divine 
promise; therefore, in finding such signal inter- 
positions in our behalf, such watch over our early 
planting, such preservation in our weakness, such 
direction in our counsels, such triumph in our 
conflicts, and such success in our attempts, we 
cannot doubt that the striking agreement between 
the prophetic language of the Hebrew Seer, and 
the historic description of our country’s glory, is 
no chance resemblance, but indicative of the pur- 
pose of Him “who worketh all things after the 
counsel of His own will.” From a past so fraught 


1 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


with Providential help, through a present, whose 
forms are stamped with the ripening designs of 
Jehovah, we are encouraged to look forward to a 
future of glorious consummation—our nation leading 
the kingdoms of this world as they become “the 
kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ,’ and 
acknowledging only the sway of Him who shall reign 
forever and ever. 

It is no small encouragement to feel that Micah’s 
picture of a happy nation may become the portrait of 
this land, without the change of an essential feature 
in the outward organism of our government. Here 
no fearful revolution must be invoked to break the 
unyielding despotism of caste. No tumultuous license 
must be set loose around the pillars of state to demand 
beneath the threat of demolition the people’s rights. 
No power is to be dragged away from the grasp of 
tyrants, which, in unaccustomed hands, may prove 
more dangerous still. Hoary customs impose no 
harsh restraints on the free movements of a vigorous 
enterprise. But a rule, as elastic as the bounding 
pulses of the people from whom it springs, shapes 
itself to every fresh requirement of progress, stretches 
without parting by the tension of difficulties, and 
again resumes its form, only the stronger for the 
strain, secures by the amplest freedom, its firmest hold 
on the fidelity of the governed, and marks its existence 
by few other monuments than the millions of homes 
which stud the streets of our cities, cluster in our 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 13 


villages, line our sea-coasts, dot our prairies, climb our 
hill-sides, and peep through our forest clearings, but 
everywhere bespeaking prosperity, welcoming the 
citizen to the enjoyment of earth’s richest boon— 
domestic peace, and laying deep the claims of a 
nation’s honor, in effects which may be rendered into 
words scarcely too strong, as follows:—“'They shall 
sit every man under his vine and under his’ fig-tree, 
and none shall make them afraid.” 

It is an inspiring assurance amid the labor and 
sacrifice incident to laying the foundations of empire, 
that they rest on the immutable principles of truth 
and righteousness; that the interests of the individual, 
so long neglected, are again asserted ; that private weal 
is the only sign of public prosperity, and that power 
shall never be wrested from its rightful owners to 
oppress, but as a sacred trust voluntarily reposed in 
the keeping of chosen guardians, be used for the 
advantage of all. Such was the confident persuasion 
which animated our forefathers when first seeking for 
themselves homes, where across the sea, and sheltered 
in the rude embrace of an untamed wilderness, they 
might escape the injustice of tyranny; and afterwards 
pledging to each other their lives, their fortunes, and 
their sacred honors, to consecrate forevermore these 
homes of freemen to LIBERTY and unrion. And now 
that two hundred years have passed away since the 
germs of American Independence were planted on our 
shores, and we look upon the fruit resembling that 


14 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


described in the Word of God, we can but be encour- 
aged by the evidence furnished to believe that Govern- 
ment at last has begun to take form around the 
unchanging idea of Deity, and will be promotive in 
the future of the welfare of our race, as in the past its 
prerogatives have been usurped to crush out humanity, 
and deform men made in the likeness of their Creator, 
into the pliant tools of despotic ambition. As how- 
ever, instead of the fathers, there are now the children, 
the encouragement from what has been achieved, as 
well as the cheering prospect of still greater success to 
come, impose on them a mighty obligation. They 
inherit the honors of their ancestors, but inherit too, as 
a precious legacy, their unfinished work, and may they 
inherit also their wisdom to plan, their magnanimity 
to forbear, their generosity to sacrifice, and their 
power to do, without which qualities they must stand 
the unworthy descendants of a lost nobility, but by 
their exercise, claim on the scroll of history for their 
names an association with the great of all the past. 
Realizing such responsibility, as ours, fellow-citi- 
zens, we may willingly turn from the joy of the assur- 
ance which our text gives us, that our country more 
than any other, stands the exponent of predicted 
national prosperity, to study thoughtfully and practi- 
cally the lessons it so concisely teaches, in order that 
our noble and free institutions may be perfected and 
perpetuated, and “glory may dwell in our land.” 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 15 


Like a rare work of art where every separate line 
blends to produce the designed effect, the scripture to 
which you have been directed, gives to the general 
view only the picture of happy homes fostered by 
national rule. Still, as by the careful analysis of the 
student, the artist’s work, but recently a mere joy, 
now teaches. the lesson of its own perfection, so each 
separate phrase of this divinely uttered prediction 
becomes a revelation of its treasured secrets, whereby 
it may be fulfilled, and the heaven-drawn image be 
transferred from the page of prophecy to find its place 
among the other historic events of earth. 

Thus analyzed, this passage of inspiration imparts 
to us its elements of combination, and we learn there- 
from that to form its conception of a nation’s glory, 
it unites four qualities in their order as follows: 
Stability, Equality, Equity and Security, beautifully 
wrought into its significant emblem—the citizen’s home 
—and interpreted into language by the theme of our 
discourse. With His accustomed brevity and fullness 
of meaning, a word, or simple phrase, suffices the Holy 
Spirit to indicate His thought. In “ They shall sit,” 
we have national stability—“ every man,” individual 
equality—“ under his vine and under his fig-tree,” 
industrial equity—‘ and none shall make them afraid,” 
personal security. 

Under the head of instruction, a brief expansion of 
each of these points is all that the occasion will allow; 
to you, then, gentlemen, guardians of the interests of 


16 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


our State, shall we commit them, as indicating in the 
administration of public affairs the path of safety, and 
furnishing a test, whereby every proposed measure 
may be rejected or approved. 

National stability may be considered as the prime 
essential requisite of every good government. A 
nation’s growth is not the result of a day. Its weak- 
ness must be fostered, its resources developed, its con- 
flicting advantages harmonized. Scope must be 
afforded for the sincere difference of opinion, yet 
restraint must hold in check the wantonness of 
license. Its strength can be matured only through 
discipline. It must prove itself worthy of the fealty 
of the citizen, and thus afford time for the gradual 
spread and deepening of patriotism. But for all this, 
generations are needed. Consequently, unless a nation 
can survive its crises, wrestle with opposing wrongs, 
and not only triumph, but gather vigor from the strife, 
and control faction without any loss of loyalty, unless 
its dominion as it spreads over wider territory only 
consolidates into greater permanence, and larger popu- 
lation but brings to it increasing reverence ; unless, 
through the vicissitudes of ages, a nation has the force 
to free itself from what has become outgrown and 
useless, without exposing its vitality, and to appro- 
priate whatever foreign element may minister to its 
healthy expansion without risking its typical form ; 
in a word, unless through all the dangers of its pro- 
bation a nation can live, it lacks the one excellence 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 17 


that alone can command respect. It fails of its end. 
Whatever transitory services it performs, whatever 
promises it may hold out, however brilliant may be its 
isolated achievements; no matter what wrongs it has 
suppressed, or what rights it has asserted, if it cannot 
maintain itself, if amid its perils it dies—that gov- 
ernment fails. A following year may change all its 
prosperity into desolation; the streets of trade and 
commerce may become but desert passes among the 
ruins of the metropolis; tyranny may build her 
despotic throne on crushed popular liberty; and an 
unpeopled waste drearily stretch itself over the oblit- 
erated sites of once cherished homes. 

None too darkly have we drawn the alternative 
of national stability. None too prominent have we 
made this element of a nation’s glory. 

The first lesson of instruction pointed by our text 
is, at the present time, the most important that we 
can learn. On it the mighty sacrifices of the past 
depend for their justification; from it springs alone 
the bright prospects of the future. A world looks 
anxiously on, breathlessly counting the chances of 
permanence for a constitutional republic, and we are 
apparently placed, either by our continuance to fur- 
nish the answer to the prayer of the oppressed, as 
‘the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain,” 
while “ the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth 
for the manifestation of the sons of God,” or by our 


failure, to prove the exultation of despotism, as it 
3 


18 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


madly clutches at a renewed lease of control over its 
disheartened prey. By all that is hallowed in memory, 
by all that is worthy in possession, by all that is 
glorious in hope, may we, as recipients of civil bless- 
ings incomparable in the world’s history, maintain in 
their unimpaired integrity our free institutions, until 
the stars on our country’s flag shall become the 
cynosure of every political firmament, and its union 
bands the pledged investiture of all nations, and 
tongues, and peoples, with the badge of brotherhood. 

Most favorable for permanence is our location. We 
are planted on fresh soil where no incrustation from 
the debris of decayed ages held bound the germ of 
free principles, or stunted its growth. No moulder- 
ing antiquity threw its baleful shadows over our 
inheritance, chilling the earnest endeavor, or mildew- 
ing the first fruits of our toil. While defenceless, 
the sea rolled its protection of waves between us and 
harm; and our rigorous climate and unsubdued forests 
had but small attractions to the ease-loving lust of 
dominion. ‘The immense territories embraced within 
our borders afford ample room for the most rapid 
increase of population, and the cheapness of our 
unsold land places within the reach of all the means 
of subsistence and comfort. There is demand for 
labor in joining our distances ; opportunity for skill 
in the construction of implements of industry, that we 
may avail ourselves of our exhaustless resources; trade 
and commerce are necessities to our variously condi- 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 19 


tioned, prosperous, and widely scattered inhabitants. 
In one region we have the pine and the hemlock 
battling with the winter storm, to be exchanged for 
the live-oak and the hickory flourishing under milder 
skies; here the autumnal -fields wave with the yellow 
grain, and there the cotton and rice whiten the 
plantation, or the cane yields its sweetness almost 
beneath a tropic sun. ‘The mines of one neighborhood 
send forth the lead, the iron, and the copper; those 
of another the silver and the gold, while interlacing 
all, run the imperishable veins of coal. Rivers rise in 
our mountains, and flowing thousands of miles, receiv- 
ing through navigable tributaries the drainage of a 
continent, find still on our own coasts their outlets 
to the sea, while everywhere, homes palpitating to the 
throb of kindred joys, like pulses, transmit the same 
vital current to the extremities, and thus bind the 
remotest members of the Confederacy in one organic, 
living Union. 

Grateful as we should be for the advantages of our 
position, and hopeful that they may contribute much 
to our permanence, we still should be far from pre- 
suming on any merely outward condition for that 
national stability which must be founded on the dispo- 
sition and character of the people. Let every influ- 
ence then that can throw the divine sanction around 
the exercise of government, be exerted on the popular 
mind. Let the Scriptural view that it is the ordi- 
nance of God, be unfolded and enforced. In its 


20 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


departure from right, seek not its dissolution, but its 
amendment. Let obedience to its laws enter into the 
solemn domain of conscience, never to be refused, 
except when compliance is plainly sin against Jehovah, 
and then, by suffering the penalty, if need be, sacrifice 
to the authority of government all but your sense of 
right. You thus will bear a noble testimony to invio- 
lable principle, and honor the majesty of law, until 
by the exercise of its own given prerogative you wipe 
out the usurpation from the statute book, and replace 
it with the enactments of justice and truth. Every 
freeman should bear in mind that he is a part of the 
State. His opinions, his will, his word, his act, his 
character show out proportionally in the grand total of 
government. very selfish motive, every mere parti- 
san effort should be spurned. He who violates his 
sense of right to vote himself or party a position of 
honor, trifles with trusts confided to him, and so far 
wrongs every fellow-citizen. He who bargains away 
his franchise, sells for a mess of pottage the noblest 
birth-right earth has ever bestowed. While the 
political speculator merits the scorn of every honest 
person, as one who recklessly hazards the welfare of 
his country. 

The utmost care should be taken that we disparage 
not our free institutions. ‘Those who fill our highest 
as well as subordinate offices, come direct from the 
people. No exclusiveness of privilege has rendered 
their persons sacred. Through the severe ordeal of 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. ri 


election, not only excellence and fitness were brought 
forward, but all were made familiar with imperfections 
and errors. There is therefore a temptation to under- 
rate the office because its incumbent is not immacu- 
late. An evil is barely alluded to here that, I am 
sure, is telling dangerously on the perpetuity of our 
delicate national organism. If government inspires 
not reverence ; if office, to a great degree, sanctifies 
not the person for the time being invested therewith ; 
if the decisions of our courts command no respect ; if 
the sacred halls of legislation are profaned from being 
the august council chamber of the people’s represented 
sovereignty to the ignoble conception of mere caucus 
rooms of interested and scheming politicians; if our 
chief magistrates—and because they are such—receive 
not the profound respect of those whose suffrages have 
elevated them to their posts of toil and dignity, then 
must we fear that not long will survive the forms from 
which the power to impress with love and veneration 
has departed. To guard against this fearful evil 
should be the determination and effort of every patriot. 
If, in the heat of a contested canvass, animosities are 
engendered, prejudices awakened, or even suspicions 
cherished, on the announcement of the result—let 
them die. Magnanimously declare the choice of the 
majority, your choice, as you would have others do to 
you. Thenceforward regard the successful candidate 
as demanding of you an unbiassed judgment of his 
acts, a kind construction of his motives, and a gen- 


22 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


erous forgetfulness of his deficiencies. If you cannot 
approve his course, respect his office, and patiently 
wait until your views may find, by the choice of a 
like majority, a more faithful representative. So will 
you secure for them, and for him, the respectful con- 
sideration you meted out to others. On the other 
hand, let the chosen incumbent of office, be he 
president, or governor, or legislator, or judge, on the 
moment of his investiture with the solemn responsi- 
bilities of his station, instantly cease to be a mere 
party man. Let every citizen, his opponent as well 
as his advocate, be assured of the most impartial dis- 
charge of all his duties. He need not give up his 
principles. He cannot, if honorable, cater through 
inconsistency to a passion for versatile popularity. 
He must not be expected to see through another's 
vision, nor judge through another’s reason; but it 
should be demanded of him that with no party 
injuries to revenge, no party subserviency to reward, 
no dogged prejudices to maintain, no after honors 
unscrupulously to crave, he will be guided in the 
discharge of his duties by a bond more sacred than a 
formal oath—a Patyriot’s love of Country, and a Chris- 
tian’s faith in God. Suppose there are errors to be 
corrected, ills to be mitigated; suppose something of 
imperfection still clings around our political machin- 
ery ; suppose in this sinful world, law has not yet 
been found potent enough to enforce righteousness, 
that all men will not be legislated into morality, and 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. On 


through our earnest labors we discover a_ tardy 
progress—shall we cowardly quail before our life- 
work, and ruthlessly, to rid ourselves of present 
annoyance, in the frenzy of the hour, pull down 
around us the fabric of our liberties, which for more 
than two centuries has been rearing its fair propor- 
tions in our land? May God forbid it! For the 
sake of homes the freest, the gladdest, the purest that 
have ever shed their light on the gloom of our world, 
fostered by this government, and every year repaying 
its care by cherishing it among the holiest associations 
of the heart, may our republic stand! And soon the 
home will spurn to hold by constraint an unwilling 
captive within its peaceful circle. The bond of 
oppression will be riven, while the trim cot of the 
paid laborer by the side of the more stately mansion 
of the proprietor, will, through the sweetest emblem of 
a nation’s glory, tell to the world that America’s last 
danger past, while time endures she stands immortal! 

Much more briefly we hasten on. Another element 
of national glory is Individual Equality. The blessing 
promised is alike the boon of each. “ They shall sit 
every man.” The prophet interposes no distinctions. 
It is true, the tree beneath which one man sits may be 
more thrifty, its fruit larger, its leaf more green; it 
may spring from a mellower soil, and cast its grateful 
shadow on a richer glebe than that beneath which 
another dwells, yet he suffers no loss of privilege from 
the different ordering of his lot by Providence. He 


24 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


is made secure in his every right, as is his more pow- 
erful neighbor, and according to his measure enjoys 
each freedom granted by the State. Might makes not 
the oppression of the weaker, right. The flagging 
purpose of the enfeebled is not to be destroyed by 
depriving them of incentive to exertion, or by impov- 
erishing their manhood by a gratuitously assumed 
guardianship of their interests. Nor is conscience to 
be despoiled of its authority by its decisions being 
submitted to human tribunals, unless they trench on 
others’ rights. Such is the type of this equality pre- 
sented to us in the suggestive phrase of Revelation. 
Such too is the noble response echoed by our own 
immortal Declaration of Independence, that “all men 
are created equal.” And sooner or later, such will be 
in our land its full realization. Of all the lessons of 
political economy, none has been more slowly learned 
—the selfishness of power has withstood it; avarice 
has sought its destruction; the drugged insensibility 
of the oppressed to their degradation has impeded it ; 
popular ignorance and superstition have dimmed its 
hight; but still it has advanced. God has ordained its 
progress, and of its universal prevalence there can be 
no doubt. As the idea has battled for existence and 
recognition, the conflicts have been bloody; and the 
struggles, in which the advance has been only inch by 
inch, painfully protracted; but truth has always 
gained. Now the contest narrows. The theory is 
already admitted; at its every success we hear a louder 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 25 


and more prophetic shout of joy. Its practice is still 
entangled, but revolutions go not backward. It may 
be for some of us to behold its last, its greatest 
triumph—as we believe, a bloodless triumph—on our 
own shores; not a triumph of party over party, of 
section over section, of race over race; but of truth 
over error, of principle over selfishness, of Christianity 
over wrong; when throughout our broad republic, 
every man, by an unalienable right, will enjoy “life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The day of 
deliverance dawns. Leta calm firmness prevail over 
the violence of impulse. Let an earnest, a serious 
appreciation of difficulties, hush the vapid boast and 
idle threat. Let a generous sympathy attribute rather 
to habit, early education, and the peculiar delicacy of 
their position, than to any inherent corruption, the 
blind infatuation with which our brethren of a com- 
mon blood, and common inheritance, rank themselves 
in opposition to their own avowed sentiments of just 
government, to the dictates of humanity, the teachings 
of the gospel, and the world’s advancing sense of right. 
Let no opprobrious and offensive denunciation awaken 
a proud self-respect to decline the dictate of conscience 
as a servile surrender to obtrusive interference. But 
having no power to retreat, if we would, and if possible, 
less desire, from the sure position that our Constitu- 
tion is the charter of freedom, and not an instrument 
of servitude, let us abide the issue, trusting in the 


God of nations, and having confidence that men, whose 
4 


26 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


fathers battled against oppression and triumphed over 
wrong, will not be found wanting in their country’s 
hour of need, as through the travail of the ages the 
time of her full deliverance has come. 

True to the emblem of our nation’s honor, let 
the home be sacred from the embittered strife of 
oppression’s last struggle against individual equality. 
If, in our national halls, for political purposes, the 
professional wrangler tones his philippic to the harsh 
note of disunion, all undisturbed around the family 
hearth-stone, where flows in kindred hearts the blood 
of North and South, and East and West, let 
patriotism flourish. Let no mission be sent out 
from the abodes of domestic peace against the 
heaven-guarded interests of fraternal homes. If, in 
this country, fathers or sons must be sacrificed to any 
cause; if slumbering families must be awakend by 
the midnight alarm; if, to plant the homes of the 
exile, you must desolate the homes of the citizen, 
you are plucking unripe fruit that will wither in 
your grasp; with frenzied haste you are attempting 
to abridge the appointed season of God’s maturing 
purpose, and your achievements must decay. The 
exchange of slavery for bloodshed, of civilized homes 
for servile elevation, the gain of the form of equality 
at the dictation of despotic force, marks no progress ; 
we have only bartered evils; but a Christian reform 
remains yet to be accomplished by the honorable toils, 
the ennobling sacrifices, the patient hope of Christian 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. yi 


philanthropy. Let, then, our homes prove indeed to 
be our glory, by nurturing sons who, as they people 
our territories, shall plant freedom throughout 
this continent. Let them inculcate a virtue that 
spurns to be bribed by ease, by wealth, by station. 
Let them cherish a love of country, from which will 
spring the patriotic legislator and ruler that shall 
recognize no guide but justice. And above all, let 
them inculcate a piety whose fervent prayer will 
invoke the aid of God to perfect that political 
equality which, under His inspiration, has been so 
nobly inaugurated in our land; and it will not be 
long until no caste shall clamor for denied rights, 
and our peace be no more threatened by the impe- 
rious demands of an institution which shames our 
professed love of liberty, broods like a demon spectre 
over every celebration of our country’s independence, 
saps the virtue of the household, tyrannizes over the 
conscience, offends God, and, not satisfied within its 
constitutionally confined limits, arrogates for its 
propagation the voice and influence of every free- 
man, and would torture our entire government into 
the support and defence of its crimes! 

Beyond any like extent of the earth’s surface does 
the soil of our Commonwealth exhibit the happy 
effects of the third element we have named of a 
nation’s glory—ZIndustrial Equity, or the night of 
every citizen to the result of his labor; and probably 
nowhere does so large a portion of the inhabitants 


28 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


“sit every man under his vine, and under his fig 
tree,’ aS In our own prosperous State. From that 
memorable day when the Pilgrims’ feet pressed 
Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts’ soil has been con- 
secrated to Homes. The company of the “ May- 
flower” were not gentlemen adventurers seeking 
wealth, who, having rifled a new country of its 
gold and gems, returned to luxurious ease, leaving 
the shores they visited a drearier desolation. ‘They 
were husbands and wives, parents and _ children, 
bringing the treasures of their hearts with them, 
whereby to garnish their humble but chosen homes 
in the wilderness. Their almost first act was to 
parcel their land into lots whereon all might erect 
their houses, and cultivate their own grounds. They 
thus showed their wisdom in planning for a separate 
industry beneath a common sympathy. Since that 
beginning this State has been foremost in asserting 
the citizen’s right to his labor, and most munificent 
in her provisions in defending and establishing it. 
No sacrifice has been too great for her cheerfully 
to make when this safeguard of freemen’s homes 
was threatened; while in peace she has set the 
noble example of preparing the unprepared for its 
advantages, and securing its immunities in their 
richest grants to the greatest number. 

To this end, our State early formed her system 
of common schools, and fostered their growth, until 
now they are the just pride of us all. Recognizing 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 29 


the principle that labor is remunerative in propor- 
tion as it is intelligent, she was not satisfied that 
her sons should enjoy what ill-conditioned toil 
should wring out for them, but sought to give them 
the advantages of an education, that their toil might 
be a hundred-fold productive. Ignorance—the bane 
of society—has never been allowed here to blight 
industry. Into our schools enter alike our whole 
population; their minds are put into connection 
with all the living forces of the world; trained to 
think, they intelligently plan their tasks; elevated 
with the hope of higher position, for which their 
education has prepared them, they waste no energy ; 
availing themselves of the advantages of knowledge, 
they possess themselves of the secrets of success 
in their calling; providently husbanding their 
resources, the comforts of competence are soon 
theirs. A well-employed leisure creates the demand 
for farther improvement; the gratification of a regu- 
lated taste refines the character, and the cultivated 
pleasures of home lighten the toil and enhance the 
repose of a virtuous life. In the unnumbered 
dwellings of content scattered through our cities, 
our villages, and over our carefully tilled fields, 
have we the evidence of the wisdom and the reward 
of the efforts of our Commonwealth, in securing to 
every man the fruits of his industry, and developing 
his full power to do, through the incomparable 


30 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


advantages of that glory of Massachusetts—her com- 
mon schools. 

A higher life-force, however, than mere education, 
has always exerted among us that influence, which, 
more than any other, develops all the faculties of 
man. Here a piety that has been the formative 
mould of character has lived and flourished. Its 
prayers have reverently invoked the blessing of 
the Almighty. Its example has restrained the license 
of sin. Its directory—the inspired Word of God— 
was the sure foundation from which our liberties 
sprung, and the Divine model of our earliest cast 
of government ; whose precepts form the code of our 
jurisprudence; on whose hallowed pages the solemn 
appeal of the oath of office is administered, and as it 
contains the sum of all wisdom, it lies on the desk 
of every school-house, the unapproachable model 
of all instruction, to be displaced never, so long as 
Massachusetts acknowledges a God to honor, or 
possesses a right arm to lift in its defence. Its 
Gospel, preached in our pulpits, and accompanied 
by the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven, regen- 
erates the character, restraining its lusts, and prom- 
ises “them who by patient continuance in well 
doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, 
eternal life.’ This piety controls the passions, sup- 
presses wrong desires, and promotes every virtue, 
showing that “godliness is profitable unto all things, 
having the promise of the life that now is, and of 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 31 


that which is to come.” By these mighty life-forces 
of Education and Religion, both cherished by our 
State, the enjoyment of each citizen in the fruits of 
his toil has reached a height hitherto unattained by 
any people. Nor do we seek a change. Let the 
Meeting-house still stand between the School-house 
and the Town-house, opening its portals on either 
side, pronouncing its benedictions on the State’s 
fostering care of the School, and sanctifying the 
culture of the School to the noble uses of the State, 
and so blending the influences of Piety, Education, 
and Patriotism over the diverse interests of all, as 
to secure to each the full enjoyment of the fruits 
of his own efforts, and, in the contentment of homes 
thus formed, derive from the citizens’ gratitude their 
united maintenance of our free institutions. All 
honor to the Commonwealth, that, beneath equitable 
laws, by the invoked aid of Learning and Chris- 
tianity, selects her merchant princes from the plough, 
her men of science from the forecastle, her senators 
from the bench, and her governors from the machine 
shop—not to reward them with additional honor, but 
herself to be enriched by their virtues; to be taught 
by their wisdom; to be represented by their counsels, 
and beneath their administrations to obtain a yet 
nobler record on the truthful scroll of history. 

As my time is already exhausted, I merely allude to 
the last element constituting a nation’s glory, that 
seeks its chief illustration in the homes of her people 


og THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


—Personal Security. “And none shall make them 
afraid.” Nor is there need of more than a mere 
allusion. We have no suggestion to offer. So long 
have we rested in quiet homes, beneath the egis of 
our country’s protection, that we have almost lost the 
sense of fear. And while we continue to look to God 
for “the wisdom that is first pure, then peaceable, 
gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good 
fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy,” and 
in its exercise to mete out to others their just rights, 
demanding only the same for ourselves, there are 
none to make us afraid. If before we had tasted of 
independence, when farther aggressions threatened the 
very existence of our homes, a citizen soldiery sprang 
from their imperilled hearth-stones, and through the 
horrors of an eight years’ war, fainted not, neither was 
weary until the vanquished enemy left these shores, 
thenceforward consecrated to freedom—then more 
certainly, should our peace be invaded now by hostile 
legions, are we assured by the gallant corps before me 
that the same source will yield a like defence. 
Heroism died not with Hancock; sublime self-sacri- 
fice was not martyred when Warren fell; the stirring 
appeals of eloquence left echoes for other tones when 
Ames’s voice. was hushed ; the monuments of Lexing- 
ton and Concord record not the epitaph of true 
bravery ; nor does Bunkev’s lofty shaft rise over buried 
glory. If needed, all will come again. God grant 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 33 


that only on more peaceful fields their prowess shall 
be marshalled. 


There is a light emanating from our subject, shed 
on certain evils which still lurk among us, that 
developes their enormity, and teaches the necessity of 
their suppression, by every lawful and effective means. 
If the glory of a nation is her people’s homes, what- 
ever tends to diminish domestic happiness, and blight 
the joys of the fireside, dishonors the State, drains her 
resources, and weakens her support. To guard against 
its dangers is not only the privilege, but the sacred 
duty of every community. Hence, if Intemperance 
besots the intelligence, indurates the heart, unnerves 
the will, demoralizes the conscience, and embrutes the 
man, unfitting the father to be the guardian of his 
household, and thé son to yield his measure of support ; 
if it impoverishes the means of living, desolates the 
inheritance, and destroys the home; if instead of 
increasing the products of industry, it imposes an 
unjust burden on the virtuous laborer; if its exam- 
ple is vicious, its contagion fatal; if in its pestilential 
vapor morality dies, and vice and crime riot, then 
must that State be sadly indifferent to a tarnished 
escutcheon if she uses not the utmost diligence to 
eradicate the evil. One failure, or a thousand should 
not exhaust her patient efforts for its destruction, nor 


cause her to desist from trying every expedient until 
5 


34 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


the demon is driven forever from her borders, and 
allowed to pollute no more the sanctuary of home. 


As surely as the honest toil of six days of the 
week is needed to plant within and around our 
dwellings the comforts of a physical existence, so 
surely is the rest of a seventh required for the devel- — 
opment and strengthening of spiritual life. With- 
out the divinely appointed interruption of labor by 
the repose of the Sabbath, man will fail to attain 
the full measure of his perfected manhood. The spir- 
itual clement will be dwarfed, the finer sentiments of 
the soul will lose their tone, the high aims of immor- 
tality, will be made subservient to the animal wants of 
the present, sense will triumph over faith, the affections 
which strike their roots deeply only in the religious 
nature, will decay, and the noble impulses gathered 
from the refreshing communion with Heaven, cease to 
inspire with lofty purpose, with virtuous enterprise 
and holy service, the wearied and overburdened breast. 
Yes, without the Sabbath men may rear a shelter 
under which nightly, in the oblivion of sleep, they lose 
the sense of fatigue; they may spread a board whereat 
they satisfy the craving of an animal appetite; 
they may lessen inconvenience, and make more toler- 
able the monotonous drudgery of unabated labor ; but 
without a Sabbath they can never enjoy a home— 
bright transcript of Eden, on whose holy occupants 
dawned first the hallowed day, and emblem of the man- 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. 85 


sion in the Father’s house when life’s brief pilgrimage 
is past. If to cherish “ whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
good report,” should be a care to the State, and if the 
mightiest influences affecting its weal spring from its 
homes, then does its own prosperity, nay, its security 
even, demand of it publicly to hallow the Sabbath, 
and guard against its ever being driven from its 
constant ministrations of mercy, as it seeks to mitigate 
the curse, and breathe over cot and palace alike its 
sweet evangel of rest. 


Even through the dreary gloom of Pauperism, our 
subject shoots a solitary ray of light, guided by which 
its noisome intricacies may be threaded, and the 
vexed problem of its relief be solved. Break not up 
the home; let benevolence spread her resources in 
rendering the hovel a more comfortable abode ; work 
on the tie of love, if not quite sundered ; awake, if you 
can reach low enough, the sense of responsibility 
dormant within the soul; change the cellar or the 
attic for a home; call back to his manhood by early 
recollections, if possible, or by future promises, the 
brutalized father; help the first effort, despair not over 
a score of falls. Poverty will never be lessened, and 
scarcely relieved by the showy provision of almshouses. 
In them may be temporary alleviation, but always 
at the cost of self-reliance, and therefore at the cost of 
hope for future amendment. If this evil is ever extir- 


36 THE HOME AND THE NATION. 


pated, it will be, we are convinced, by the personal 
ministry of love through the divinely appointed 
instrumentality of homes. 

But I forbear: praying that through the succession 
of coming generations, our Commonwealth, rich in 
the affections of her noble sons, strong through her 
virtues, with the impediments to her progress over- 
come, rejoicing in a liberty founded on justice, enlight- 
ened by knowledge, refined by taste, and regenerated 
by Christianity, may present in her peaceful homes 
the brightest evidence of her glory, and stand the 
model of other States in the realization of the divine 
prophecy, “They shall sit every man under his vine 
and under his fig tree; and none shall make them 
afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath 
spoken it.” — 


And now, will his Excellency the Governor, not in 
studied forms of empty adulation, exacted by imperial 
courts as the homage of an obsequious clergy, but in 
the manly and spontaneous utterances of the heart, 
accept the congratulations of the occasion. Sir, in the 
names of those happy homes over which you preside, 
and whose representative to-day, I am proud to con- 
sider myself, I offer to you the honorable testimonial 
of their cordial respect. By their intelligent suffrages 
you have been called thrice to the chief magistracy of 
this Commonwealth. In this third elevation to the 
post of dignity and trust, you have the evidence of the 


THE HOME AND THE NATION. or 


generous confidence reposed in your integrity, and the 
reward of the services you have so faithfully performed. 
May the blessings invoked around the family altars of 
a grateful people, rest on your continued adminis- 
tration, and when the cares of public office are grace- 
fully laid aside, follow you into retirement, where, 
amid the quiet and refined pleasures of your own 
fireside, you may be our exemplar to illustrate the 
private virtues of the citizen, as you have been our 
choice to emulate the distinguished excellences of the 
illustrious men who have preceded you in the high 
position you so honorably fill. 

To his Honor the Lieutenant-Governor, the honor- 
able Council, and Members of the Senate and House 
of Representatives, we also respectfully tender the 
expressions of our confidence. You have come up 
fresh from your homes on which the divine munifi- 
cence has poured out at the opening of this new year 
the tokens of continued prosperity. So far as they 
can be committed to human hands, gentlemen, they 
are reposed as a holy trust in your watchful guardian- 
ship. We feel no fear. But as our duty is, we will 
pray that He that giveth liberally wisdom, may guide 
your counsels, lead you to right decisions, and promote 
your efforts to advance this ancient State to yet greater 
renown and honor. Your term of office les within a 
year big with consequences to our beloved country. 
May it be marked by the triumph of a calm, conser- 
vative, resolute spirit of devotion to the constitutional 


38 THHE HOME AND THE NATION. 


principles of national freedom over the excited pas- 
sions of sectional violence, that seek to debase into a 
perpetual lease of bondage the glorious birthright of 
American freemen. 

The clock of time prepares to strike another hour 
in our country’s history. We joyfully anticipate the 
peal as the knell of oppression, the prophetic chime of 
universal liberty. 


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